ROADWORK TO GIVE CYCLISTS MORE ROOM

Resurfacing and widening planned

Carlsbad is carving out more space for cyclists in this year’s street maintenance work.

The city is widening bike lanes on two major north-south thoroughfares — Carlsbad Boulevard and El Camino Real — and adding them for the first time on Carlsbad Village Drive west of Interstate 5 through the downtown Village area.

Before the lane improvements begin, the roads will get a new layer of asphalt as part of street maintenance taking place around the city over the next several weeks. Several smaller streets will get a layer of thin sealant.

Space for the bike lanes will come from the existing travel lanes, said Bryan Jones, the city’s deputy transportation director.

“We have some really wide travel lanes, so instead of giving the extra space to the travel lanes we are going to give the extra space to the bike lanes,” Jones said.

That’s important because the cyclist is “the most vulnerable traveler on the road,” he said.

Some of the bike lanes also will get “buffered” areas, he said, which will be extra space between cyclists and moving cars or between cyclists and parallel-parked vehicles where the occupants could open a door into the bike lane.

Many cyclists live in fear of the “door zone,” where they could suddenly ride full-speed into the immobile obstacle created by an open car door.

Carlsbad has been working recently to be more accommodating to cyclists, part of a long-term plan to boost downtown business and promote tourism.

The city installed 20 new bike racks in the Village, and has obtained a grant to purchase and install 80 more. Some of those racks will be installed in “corrals,” like small parking lots for bicycles.

The improved bike lanes will be installed as part of a lengthy list of street-maintenance work scheduled for April. The city spends about $3.5 million annually on street maintenance, Jones said.

Most of this year’s road maintenance will be done in the northwestern part of the city. A map showing the streets and a schedule for the work is available on the city’s website,
carlsbadca.gov.

Many of the streets involved just need a slurry seal, which is a thin coat of oil, tar and fine gravel or sand that seals small cracks, prevents oxidation and gives the street a fresh look.

“It cures pretty quickly,” said Jon Schauble, an associate engineer in the city Transportation Department. “We have traffic back on it in a couple hours.”

Temporary tabs will be placed where striping is needed, Schauble said, and crews will return later to apply the markings.

The three major roads getting new or wider bike lanes will also be repaved with a 1-inch-thick layer of asphalt. That work will be done after the slurry seal work is finished, Jones said.

The resurfacing will be done on one 12-foot-wide lane at a time, Jones said, so other lanes on the roads will remain open to traffic while the work is done.